Profound empathy. Clear insight. A gift for healing. These are just some of the talents of the “spiritually sensitive” person—yet these apparent blessings can often become a source of loneliness, self-doubt, and limitation. Belonging Here is a lifesaving book that shows how our spiritual gifts become entryways into both the depths of human connection and our innermost selves.

Written by one spiritual sensitive for another, Belonging Here draws from Dr. Blackstone's personal story as well as her 30-year psychotherapy practice, which has focused on teaching clients how to integrate personal healing and spiritual awakening through an embodied approach she calls the Realization Process. Join this pioneering teacher to explore five of the most common challenges of the spiritually sensitive, along with exercises and meditations for living mindfully and compassionately with each, including:

- Thin Skin—how to create strong but permeable boundaries between ourselves and the external environment

- Landing on Earth—staying grounded within the whole of one's body by mending inner fragmentation

- Hearing the Cries of the World—how to open to our own joy even as we respond to the suffering in the world around us

- Shape Shifters—removing the protective masks of the false personality

- The Stranger—how to make the return from self-exile to self-acceptance

You can live authentically in a world that once seemed alien. You can find happiness and acceptance where isolation and confusion have reigned. You can come home at last, with Belonging Here.

EXCERPT

Landing on Earth: The Challenge of Grounding

David had silky blonde hair down to his shoulders and a beatific smile that did not quite mask the sadness in his eyes. While he smiled at me in a somewhat distant benediction, I had the impression of a small boy looking out from his eyes with longing and despair. David had come to me because he felt at a crossroads in his life, unable to decide which direction to choose. He felt both bored and daunted by the need to make a living and to find a comfortable place in which to live. He wanted to go far away, to dedicate himself wholly to spiritual life, but he felt conflicted. Something seemed unfinished to him, and held him here in the ordinary world.

As he sat across from me and related this dilemma, I was aware of the tremendous light above his head. He was glowing, from his forehead upward. The bottom of his body, however, especially his pelvis, was tight and lifeless. I could feel the discomfort of this imbalance. He had no foundation, nothing to support the brilliant expanse at the top of his being.

I felt great respect for David, not just because of the light that emanated from the top of his head, but also because he knew that even with all that light, something was not quite right. He knew that he needed to heal. Even so, it was a struggle. As he talked, it was clear that he was trying to convince me that he had no interest in the world, did not need a profession or friends or an intimate relationship. He viewed these things as distractions that keep other people from seeing the truth. He addressed me sometimes as his ally, someone who would validate his dedication to his spiritual path, and sometimes as his enemy, the conventional drudge who would condemn his life choices as weird or sick.

But I had no opinion about his life choices. I do not think it is any healthier to have a job and a family than to live as a hermit in the woods or on an ashram in India. I was only concerned with the openness of his being, the many contradictions and conflicts that dwelled in him, especially the deep fragmentation between his upper and lower body. I wanted to help David become open in his whole body not because I thought he must have sexual intimacy in his life or a conventional job, but because I thought that his progression Landing on Earth: The Challenge of Grounding on his spiritual path depended on it. He needed to find his whole being so that he could uncover his whole light.

Grounding exercise

Although David had ample vitality in his own body, his upward displacement in the way he lived in his body made him feel weak, a “pushover.” I worked with David to help him become more grounded.

I asked him to stand and to feel that he was inside his feet, that he inhabited them. The feet are a very effective foundation if we inhabit them completely, from the toes to the heels.

Then I instructed him to experience that there was no separation between him and the floor. He was able to feel this, but each time he inhaled, he lifted out of his feet and went back up to the top of his body. I asked him to let his breath adjust to him being in his feet. He had to find a different, whole body way of breathing in order to stay in his feet as he breathed.

I continued the exercise, asking David to inhabit his ankles, and to feel the internal continuity between his ankles and his feet.

Then I asked him to feel that he inhabited his legs and then his pelvis, and to feel that he was standing in his legs, rather than on them.

David did not like the feeling of inhabiting his lower body. He said that he felt a great heaviness, binding him to the ground.

“Can I walk like this?” he asked.

“Try,” I suggested.

He took a few slow, hesitant steps across the floor of my office, and then stopped, looking surprised. “Well, I do feel stronger,” he said.

Some experts on the body claim that human beings suffer from having made the evolutionary shift from getting about on all fours to standing upright on two feet. They suggest that standing is somehow not our “natural” position. This is not true; we would not have made the shift to two feet if we had not been ready to do so. When we stand upright, we can receive an upward current of energy that comes up from the ground and moves through our body. This energy supports the body internally, making it buoyant and very easy to stand. This only happens if we inhabit our body, so that the body is open to receive the upward energy.

I asked David to find the centers of the bottom of his heels, and then to balance his awareness of these two points. Then I asked him to find the point just before the ball of each foot (the metatarsal), and to balance his awareness of those Landing on Earth: The Challenge of Grounding two points. Then to open these four points to receive the upward current of energy that came from below his feet and to receive it within his ankles.

I asked him to find the inside of his hip sockets, and to balance his awareness of those two points. I encouraged him to receive the upward energy current in his hip sockets. As the exercise progressed, I asked him to receive the upward current in the center of his chest and shoulder sockets (from where it flowed down through his arms) and then within the center of his head, and finally to feel it passing up through the center of the top of his head—all the while still feeling connection to the origin of the current from below his feet. In order to receive this upward current of energy, we need to be settled toward the ground throughout the whole internal space of our body. Even the top of our head needs to be gently settled for the energy to pass through it.

With some practice, this energy flow coming up from the ground relieved the heaviness that David felt as he inhabited his feet and legs. He began to feel alive through his whole being.